TextThing URL Structure and Categories

Published 31 August 05 by Justin French, 19 comments

Yes, I am actually working on it in my spare time, yes we’ll have a beta soon, yes you should put your name on the mailing list if you’d like to help out with testing.

So…

As I may have discussed before, I’m pretty particular about the URL structure for TextThing: /section/category/article-title.

TT is a general purpose CMS (not really a blogging tool, because there’s plenty of them already) and I feel this URL structure best fits most websites.

However, it does bring up a few questions, most of which I’ve found answers for, but I’m always keen to hear some alternate points of view.

What happens if we change the section, category or article title?

Yup, that’s a problem. On one hand, the URI/URL of an article or resource should never change, so I probably should prevent the authors from ever changing this information. On the other hand, surely this is a decision best left in the hands of the authors.

I think education about the importance of permanent URLs is much more positive than the idea that TT takes control and totally disallows the change. So unless anyone can convince me otherwise, I’ll be doing just that.

What about nested categories?

I’ve been over this before as well, many times. My gut feeling is that the average site in my target market will not need them, and for those that do, they’ll more than likely be able to find a way around this, with alternate naming of the categories, etc.

This has the added bonus of making the URL parsing code much more efficient, the interface for adding/editing articles much simpler, and generally takes away a bunch of noise that only a small number of potential users would need.

If TextThing is the CMS That Does Less, then this is a perfect example of where I need to let go of the idea that I can please everyone, and focus on the other 90%

What about multiple categories?

Yes, I know you’re all going to use this thing as a blogging tool, even though it’s not intended to be abused in such ways (truth be told, justinfrench.com will probably be running on TextThing soon), so I’m mindful of the blogging tradition of assigning a post/article to multiple categories.

Textpattern allows for two, WordpPress & Typo allow for many, and MovableType (which I’ve never used) seems to allow for multiple categories as well.

But when I look down the list of articles I’ve published on this site, or even the sites that I visit daily, I don’t see any burning need for multiple categories. When we talk about TextThing as a general purpose CMS, the need for multiple categories fades away.

I’m really trying to avoid multiple categories. The interface will be much simpler, there’s a whole lot less software to write, and a bunch of related problems and questions just seem to disappear when there’s only one category.

I get the feeling most of us use them because they’re available — not because they’re essential, but I’d love to hear some feedback from my readers on this one.